


Chiaroscuro

by tokyonightskies



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Universe, Curses, Fluff and Smut, Incest, Language of Flowers, M/M, Minor Violence, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Naruto Time Skip | Naruto Shippuden, Romance, Sibling Incest, Sirens, Transformation, Underage - Freeform, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-14 16:24:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4571409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokyonightskies/pseuds/tokyonightskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>an anthology of sorts: collecting all my noteworthy uchiha itachi/uchiha sasuke drabbles from tumblr and posting them on here. drabbles might be canon, might not, might be interconnected, might not. content is questionable, but that's half the fun. really.<br/>--<br/>i. morning blues (vampire!sasuke)<br/>ii. excerpt#1 (modern!au)<br/>iii. seaside (canon-divergence)<br/>iv. azalea (canon)<br/>v. knock me off track (filler-divergent)<br/>vi. scraps (multiple)<br/>vii. silver for monsters (sirens!au)<br/>his body is weightless</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. morning blues (itasasu, vampire!sasuke)

**Author's Note:**

> first drabble: morning blues  
> alternative universe, non-incest, ft. vampire!sasuke and a dead homeless guy. first itasasu drabble that pops up in my tags so i decided to post it first. life can be that simple sometimes.
> 
> inspired by & dedicated to: itasasu-guardian.  
> who posted this: 
> 
> I’ve seen so many Itasasu fics with itachi as a seme vampire and sasuke as an uke human slave.
> 
> why not uke vampire sasuke and seme human itachi?~
> 
> switch the roles here?~ I would love a fanfic on that!~
> 
> i only tried to deliver. the aesthethic is blood-stained pastel.

.

Itachi touches the inside of his wrist with nimble fingers and it’s almost reverent, wholesome –  _and the boy squirms uncomfortably when his thumb presses down on his dead pulse_ ; Itachi comes to hold his hand and rests his temple against the crown of his head. Bright lights fall onto them in white swipes as the bus treks onwards through the city center. He wants to kick his feet against the empty seat in front of him just to look at the silly dinosaur-patterned socks Itachi bought him earlier this week, to see if they would peek from above his sneakers.

“You’re tired.. You shouldn’t have come with me.” He murmurs softly as he squeezes the warm hand in his lap. Only Itachi is reflected in the window glass, contrasted by the inside lighting of the bus, as if he’s the only person on the seat.

There’s a soft chuckle as reply, a sound he’s so easily gotten accustomed to it makes him close his eyes and revel in the familiarity. His cold thumb comes to caress Itachi’s skin. 

“You were hungry, Sasuke.” Itachi states simply, unseemingly comfortable in the fact he’s an accomplice to homicide, in the fact he watched him pin a homeless man down and rip open his throat in sheer  _need_.

His throat closes up and he instinctively  _knows_  Itachi would kiss him and cradle him in the warmth of his embrace if there weren’t other people on the bus. It’s 4:46 in the morning and they’re taking the first bus back to their home in the suburbs. Sasuke wets his dry lips and traces his teeth with his tongue and tastes metal on his palate. He had to wipe his chin with yesterday’s newspaper and in the dim lighting of the alleyway, the fine print was blotched a dark messy red. 

“Don’t worry so much about it.” It’s a kind admonishment, the sort of comment that comes with spilling coffee on a dress shirt or breaking the remote control.

Sasuke scowls and leans his head against the cool window glass, offering Itachi the entire sight of his petulance. His skin turns paler, ashes’ white, while the contrast wih his dark eyes grows starker. Itachi chuckles again, amused at this ageless creature and his age-old whims.

He confesses in a tone of voice that implies repetance and repitition, “I don’t get you, sometimes.”

Itachi carefully brushes his fingertips over the bulb of his cheek, down to the outline of his jaw. It ultimately shatters this precocious image of brotherhood they project to the outside world, even inside the small bus. 

“Well, I would hate to bore you.” He leans in close and Sasuke can feel his hot breath and anticipates a kiss that would leave him shivering if…  _he was human, too._

There’s no kiss, only a gentle press of the foreheads. It leaves him wanting more and the greed nestles itself under his undead flesh. Itachi can be so frustrating sometimes, in how he gives and when he decides to give. (and in  _what_ he decides to give.) It’s been 359 years since Sasuke felt so much for someone, for anyone. 

“You better kiss me for real when we get home.” Sasuke says, only slightly on the edge. The homeless man’s blood still heavy on his stomach.  

Itachi settles back against the gray cushions of the bus seat and folds his hands against his abdomen. He hums lowly and answers, “I think you should go rest, the sun’s going to rise in ten minutes or so.”

His head thunks against the glass and if he put a bit more force into the motion, he could’ve cracked the window. Itachi only smiles patiently and reaches for his hand again. 

Itachi’s lap is infinitely warmer than his. It always manages to take him by surprise. 

They stop two blocks from their apartment and get out of the bus and see the orange sky slipping in between the tall buildings and overhead. They’re still holding hands and Itachi is also holding a plastic bag from Family Mart with a bottle of shampoo and tea-scented hand cream. Sasuke feels a soft peck to his temple and rolls his eyes. 

“What was that for?” He wonders aloud as they cross the street to walk underneath the trees.

Itachi caresses the inside of his wrist again, touches his dead pulse.

“For thinking I wouldn’t get up at two thirty to help you feed and how mistaken your assumption is.” He sounds serious, despite his casual posture. His ponytail sways along his shoulders.

Sasuke tugs at his hand and stands on his toes, damning his never-changing seventeen year-old appearance. He presses a kiss to the corner of Itachi’s mouth and replies, “I would’ve never thought of buying hand cream to douse the smell of blood.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” He states wryly before kissing him squarely on the mouth. Sasuke knows how cold and dry his lips must feel and muses for the umpteenth time why Itachi goes along with it, _with this_.

They can hear the rumble of the garbage car as it rounds the corner. Five more minutes and they’re back home as the Uchiha  _brothers_. When Sasuke opens tomorrow’s paper there might be a paragraph about a murdered homeless man found in a dumpster. There might not, it depends on how much space is available. He remembers how the dim lighting fell on Itachi’s face, on the slope of his nose when he helped him roll the body in cut-open black garbage bags. 

Sasuke remembers Itachi’s hands and how beautiful they were at that moment, when he closed the dumpster and blocked off the awful smell of rotting food and flesh. 

.


	2. excerpt #1 (modern!au)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ii. excerpt #1 (modern!au)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> second drabble: excerpt #1  
> modern!au, explicit incestuous content, ft. pushy!teen!sasuke and internal moral conflicts. i merged excerpt #1 & #2 together because they're so dreadfully short otherwise.

Sasuke pushes him to the wall and Itachi thinks he’d gone to far by trying to tickle his little brother under the armpits. Always been a sensitive spot. His palms are being guided down Sasuke’s sides to the handle of his hips and are being kept there, grounded. Furrowing his brows, he wants to say something, an attempt at an apology or maybe an inquiry to figure out what Sasuke’s playing at but suddenly his little brother is just so close to his own face it startles him.

For all his wit, Itachi doesn’t know how to react when his little brother reduces the distance between their mouths to an exhale.

“I..” Sasuke starts, gazing up at him with half-hooded eyes and Itachi just knows he’s standing on his tiptoes to reach. But what is he reaching for? His fingers delve into Sasuke’s shirt, as if he wants to excavate through the fabric to reach his brother’s skin, his bones.

All sorts of alarm bells go off in his mind. Suddenly the lack of air between them becomes palpable.

“I want this.” This is his little brother, pleading, tired of playing games. Sasuke drags the button of his nose along the crease of his left cheek, to the corner of his mouth. “I want you. I’ve wanted you for so long.”

Itachi presses his forehead to the crown of Sasuke’s head and murmurs gently, “You’re confused, _little bro–_ ”

The endearment gets broken up, broken apart by the sudden press of chapped lips to his own. He’s stunned and his fingertips print their indent through Sasuke’s shirt, into his flesh. It’s a chaste, shy kiss. If Itachi hadn’t pulled back, he’s been certain Sasuke would’ve tried to push his heart between Itachi’s teeth just to see if he’d swallow. Or tear it apart.

“I’m not.” Sasuke says as he looks at him defiantly, desperately, short of a brother please. “I’m not, okay. Stop… Stop acting like I don’t know what’s good for me.”

Itachi touches his nose along the slope of Sasuke’s, murmurs, “But I’m not.” It’s a saline kindness, one that sounds like someone’s crying.

It doesn’t stop Sasuke from kissing him again, from pushing his heart down Itachi’s throat.

And wordlessly, the action screams: Accept it,  _please_!

.

He is afraid to ask Sasuke what he wants, because the answer would quite possibly be “ _you_ ” this time around and that’s a lot more specific than just “ _this”_. He rolls over onto his stomach and props his arm under his pillow and sighs into the silence of his room. Street light falls in from between the pale blinds and shifts over the paneling of his bedroom floor. It blinks 2:34 in bold red numbers on his alarm clock and he’s mulling this entire situation over in his head. It feels too confining, between these four walls, but he couldn’t get up and change and take a walk outside at this hour, not without waking somebody up.

So Itachi presses his face into his pillow and sighs again.

The kiss still lingers, ghostlike in its tangibility and romantic in its persistence. As if Sasuke’s stubbornness got stuck to his mouth and every time he swipes his tongue over his lips, he can taste it, can taste  _him_. It’s not all together unpleasant. This, Itachi muses, must be why it frightens him. His little brother is still so young and it’s easy (convenient) for Itachi to chalk everything up to hormones, explain it as a phase, condemn it to the temporal even if the intensity of his brother’s feelings… (and what about his own?)  _no, don’t go down that path._

He’s overthinking, again. Itachi tries to delve through his pillow to his mattress with his forehead. They are going to have to talk about this. If Sasuke is willing to face him of course. He can imagine his little brother feeling embarrassed and humiliated by his rejection, angered maybe if the heated look was something to go by. Every handful of his self-control not to reach out for him when he left the living room and then some, that’s what it took to let Sasuke go brood in solitude.

Guilt is devouring him. His tongue slips out and over his lower lip again. 2:39 on the red dot when he turns his cheek to the pillow and glares weary-eyed at the alarm clock. 

Maybe he should just get some  _fucking_ sleep.


	3. seaside (canon-divergent)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> iii. seaside (canon-divergent)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> third drabble: seaside  
> basically an itachi-tells-sasuke-the-truth-and-they-elope!what if.

.  
Sasuke takes him to the beach. They stand in the cold wet sand with their toes and feel the waves crashing down on their ankles, white foam on white feet. Itachi fills his lungs with fresh, sea-salt air and simply breathes in, out, in and out, deeply. Behind them is a cottage, behind them are dunes and sandy roads and scallop shells scattered in shades of gray and broken white. Above them is an overcast sky, dark clouds zipped up with orange sunlight, hiding.

This is more than Itachi feels he deserves.

“I’ll take care of you from now on, aniki.” His little brother sounds so solemn, so serious when he swears this.

His weakened gaze falls back from the horizon, onto the pale hand that holds his. With its bruised knuckles, not completely healed.

Itachi breathes in and out. There are three seagulls cawing, flying on and ahead of the waves. He doesn’t need his sharingan now, not anymore.  
.

Sometimes they argue, sometimes they fight, old habits they suppose. Sasuke slides the paper doors shut with more verocity than Itachi thought possible. Ceramic cups and bowls rattle on the table. Their opinions on what has happened, on what will happen and what has to happen differ and this is an understatement. He’ll let his brother walk it off, calm down outside.

Wind howls outside, loudly, bashes against the walls and the windows. It’s pouring. Itachi folds his hands in his lap, knowing his little brother can take care of himself by now.  _He willed it so._

Itachi holds his breath, holds it in his chest, in his sickened lungs; he holds it until his brother comes back to him.

.

“I want you to look at me.” Sasuke whispers as he guides his brother’s fingertips over his cheekbones, the gaunt of his cheeks, the line of his jaw, the cupid’s bow of his upper lip, the bulb of his bottom one. 

This is part of reality now: his eyesight fading, his body failing. Sasuke bringing him medicinal tea, wiping the corners of his mouth when he coughs up blood, rubbing his paper-frail temples to ease the pounding in his head. His little brother doesn’t complain, only frets and winds himself up over his health.  _it’s more than itachi feels he deserves._

And his fingertips gently, carefully thread upon the structure of Sasuke’s face, the column of his throat, the juncture of his neck and shoulder, the hollow of his collar bones, the beginning of his sternum. 

Itachi can’t breathe, can’t  _breathe,_ because this is what touching light feels like, beautiful and warm. 

.

As far as Sasuke is concerned, there is no outside world. It doesn’t deserve Itachi’s presence, it doesn’t deserve Itachi’s loyalty and servitude and it certainly doesn’t deserve his older brother’s life.  _don’t think about it, don’t think about it._

He sucks in the sea-salt air, greedily, as he taps his fingers on the wooden doorframe. But softly so softly because his brother is finally sleeping after a rough night of coughing fits. What kind of little brother would he be if he accidentally wakes him up? 

.

“Promise me something, Sasuke.” 

“ _Anything.”_

“I want you to kill me before the sickness does.”

Sasuke will always be more than Itachi feels he deserves.

_~~but that doesn’t stop sasuke from clinging to his older brother like a frightened child. and itachi cradling him in return, strongly even as the sobs wreck their bodies.~~  
_

.

“I will always love you, Sasuke.” 

Itachi feels the wind in his hair, feels his brother’s hand in his, feels the fading warmth of the sun, feels the waves lapping at his ankles. Itachi fills his lungs with fresh, sea-salt air.

.


	4. azalea (canon-verse)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drabble iv: azalea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bouquet of azalea in a black vase amounts to as much as a death threat. (first loves, the home brush, fragility & softness, the feminine: a seven-piece for itasasu)
> 
> incestuous undertones, underage, itachi's sketchy anbu past, ust & the scene.

i. 

When Sasuke first meets Itachi again after several years, he’s wearing black.

 ii. 

The corridor straightens, narrows; everyone else seems to be cast as a background figure, blurred silhouettes with but a few defining features, the color of their hair, the broadness of their shoulders, the outline of a long coat. All of this and more, such as the blankness of the walls, serves to enhance how clearly he sees his older brother. His clear _cut_ cheekbones and his eyes and his forehead looming from above the popped collar of the coat are so defined it’s almost like in a photograph, the ones he had to throw away with a sob inside his throat.

And Itachi’s profile, he judges as impassive as a statue, regarding him with ennui, disregarding him with a tongue stuck,

 _to the inside of his cheek_. 

He knows he shouldn’t let his anger get the best of him, but he allows the trespass of his own emotions so easily the sparks of his chidori are almost an afterthought. A hot blue warmth is cocooning the palm of his hand, his wrist, his lower arm. The wall spits up chunks of concrete as the lightning tears through its surface the set line of a mouth. 

(the staccato  _snap_ of his wrist, stopping him straight in his tracks, renders him deaf to everything but a heartbeat drumming between his two ears.)

I’m not interested in you, right now. – As if Sasuke cares, as if any fiber of his  _stretched-thin_  and _stretched-open_  patience cares what Itachi is here for. He’s here and that’s all that matters. He’d bite his teeth broken on any explanation for the sharp stab of rejection he feels deep down his belly. 

He gets kicked into a wall, he’s nauseous from the pain.

There’s no air left in his lungs when his older brother comes to loom over him, like the silhouette of a tree sheds itself onto the ground.  _No_ , instead the breath lingers between the outline of his open mouth as he stares up at his brother’s face. He sees the furrows parallel his nose, edging deeper along the gaunt of his cheeks, the dark line set through their village symbol, the slight shadows his side-swept bangs cast along his forehead, his face. Then; the sudden movement, the fist to his gut, the blood spat from his chapped lips, his sense of orientation dizzied, dazed.

_and_

Sasuke crumbles, a young boy still.

iii. 

What do you do when the nightmares are preferable to the dreams you have about the past? When every happy moment you’ve had with him is something you’ve come to second-guess  _now_  early mornings awake in your apartment. When you think back to your childhood and remember his smiles and his arms around your waist and his fingertips hard-pressed against your forehead. What if all that _and more_  wasn’t real, wasn’t genuine. What if everything he ever said to you was meaningless or worse, _a lie._

What if you don’t know what you’d prefer. What then? 

He makes breakfast. The tea kettle whistles loudly on the furnace, a shrill sound that chases the silence away, out of the corners. Today he’ll be drafted into a team and be assigned to a sensei. He seasons the omelet with pepper and salt. Sunlight falls onto the counter and the pale plate and the ceramic cup too bask in the morning glow. He has been up for three hours already, unable to fall back asleep. His gaze falls on the empty doorway leading to his bedroom. The tea kettle is still whistling and steam spews from its spout and from underneath its metal lid. He pulls the frying pan off the hot plate and puts it on the coaster and grabs the tea kettle and pours the hot water into his cup. It’s silent again, aside from the soft shuffle of his footsteps. Last night he dreamt of that time he crept into his brother’s bedroom after he got home from a long mission to the Suna desert. 

_“Can I sleep with you tonight, big brother? It was really boring without you around…”_

He tugs onto the string of the teabag until the water turns a dark brown and pulls the teabag back out of the cup and dumps it onto the empty saucer. Wet and soggy, dripping brownish tea water. He scrapes at the omelet with the spatula until the egg gives and flips it onto his plate. There’s a glass bottle of ketchup on the counter but he doesn’t reach for it yet. His memory of that night is a bit foggy, but he’s often wondered why his brother was so out of it. Was he already contemplating the massacre back then? 

_“I would’ve rather been bored here, together with you.” Itachi murmurs as he accommodates his little brother’s body in bed. He’s lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. There’s little humor in his voice._

_Sasuke rolls over onto his side and onto his stomach, so that he’s half on top of his big brother, arms crossed on his chest. “But you went out on a mission!” He can’t contain his wonder and excitement as if it’s bursting apart at the seams of his small body. More quiet: “All the way to Suna.”_

He squirts ketchup all over his omelet, fully knowing he’ll have to throw away more than half of it. The glass bottle makes a low  _thunk_  when he puts it back on the counter. It’s still empty in the open doorway, still dark in his bedroom –not having bothered with the blinds. He takes a sip of tea, bitter like his father used to drink it. The taste sticks to his palate, refusing to be gulped down with the rest of it. 

_“I didn’t really like the mission.” Itachi whispers as he puts his arms around Sasuke’s waist in reflex, tries to coax him back beside him. They’re embracing now, his little brother safely tucked away at the underside of his chin._

_He pouts and mutters, “Is this one of those things I’m too young to understand?” His head falls down on Itachi’s pillow; he nestles himself close, closer to his brother._

_“No.. Well maybe a bit.” His brother murmurs, amused but not entirely. Sasuke figures his older brother must be really tired, but he’s surprised when Itachi continues, “I had to do something I didn’t want to do."_

_"Then why didn’t they get someone else to do it?”_

He cleans up after himself before he leaves for the academy. The plate and the cup and the chopsticks are placed in the sink, soaking in lukewarm water. More than half of the omelet is dumped in the trashcan, the ketchup bottle placed back in the fridge and the salt and pepper shakers are stacked neatly in the cabinet above the furnace with the other spices. He flips off the light switch with wet fingertips and locks the door. The jingling of his keys the only noise in the empty hallway.

_“Because I’m the youngest. I was the obvious choice for this mission.” Itachi explains kindly, gingerly shifting his arm around his little brother’s shoulder._

_It was always so much warmer and more comfortable in his big brother’s bed. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t spend nearly enough time to warm up his own, he thinks to himself. He delves the tip of his nose into the hollow of his brother’s clavicle. His closed eyes peering from above the sheets._

Sasuke walks to the academy by himself. It’s still a bit chilly in the morning and goosebumps form along his bare calves up to the inside of his knees and above. Konoha is noisy and lively and all around, more so than in his sorry excuse of a kitchen, the smell of homemade food lingers. 

iv. 

Itachi remembers a coarse hand fisting his hair, yanking his head backwards until his neck was painfully curved; the column of his throat exposed to the man’s face. His young body exposed to the heat of another, to the dry desert air slipping through the narrow tent flap; his kneecaps pushed into bundled-up silk and below that, the yielding sand.

_–don’t let him touch you, ibiki mutters in warning when he hands him the sealed scroll, don’t ever let those sick fucks touch you.–_

He was straddling the man, looking at him with heavy-lidded eyes, spilling the stilted gasps from his lips like a calligraphy brush drops its ink, languidly. Clockspring eyelashes blanketing the sensitive skin of his lower eyelids as he blinks deliberately, seductively. One hand was steady on his lower back, a heavy palm and all its life lines pressing into his naked flesh, and then going lower, to the curve of his ass. Itachi hissing, his mouth threatening the man with an unsure smile, a flash of white teeth bracketed by thin lips.  _And his own hands, wandering their clammy way upwards._

Their footsteps are muffled, the soles of their sandals barely imprinted in the gravel of the dirt path. Kisame’s shadow dwarfs his own, dragging onwards in a sketchy line. He keeps Kisame’s profile in his peripheral for a moment before dragging the brim of his straw hat downwards, the white tassels shaking with the movement. Konoha looms in front of them, with its tall buildings shimmering a chalk white in the sunlight. 

His thoughts go to his little brother, abandoning the memory of the mission. Desert sand makes way for the solid wooden paneling of his old bedroom floor at the compound, the sound of his door sliding open and soft childlike footsteps teetering the long road from the door to the edge of his futon. 

_“Can I sleep with you tonight, big brother?”_

Besides him, Kisame adjusts the heavy sword on his back, but keeps quiet otherwise. His companion seems to sense that he’s not in the mood to talk. 

_‘It was really boring without you around.”_

The dip of the mattress, the shifting of the sheets, the warm small body next to him, so much more comfortable than the weight of that man, than those huge hands on his hips, than the choked coughs coming from the man’s mouth when he pushed down  _hard_  on the flat of a throat. 

They’re almost at the gates, the leaves of the trees are gently rustled by the wind. Itachi remembers he put an arm around his little brother’s shoulder then to press him ever close to his chest. His gaze falls on the shadows in front of them.

( _Sasuke. –_ three syllables; casually spoken.

He doesn’t look up from his spot, but he can feel how his fingers twitch in response to the name. And something beyond him,  _inside of him- his soul, his heart perhaps,_  wants to grab onto a hand that isn’t here. And that surely will never be there for him to hold onto, again. )

v.

_The kunoichi scrutinizes him and his eleven year-old posture. Her painted-pink furl upwards in a demure, somewhat uneasy smile; as if she still has room for sheathed sentimentality on her body. “You’re a pretty boy. They always like that.”_

_He doesn’t smile back. The compliment falls flat in the distance between them, in the slatted light of the anbu locker room. She awkwardly scrapes her throat, touches the inside of her elbow in an automatism._

_“I see they’ve informed you about my next mission.” Itachi remarks politely, “I would be in your debt if you would give me some advice.” He’s nonplussed as he says this, he might as well be discussing a different topic entirely._

Itachi watches how the boy glares at him with blackeyed fire, how the boy’s chest rises and falls, how the boy’s body rattles in rage like an old-fashioned door frame. Pale blue lightning comes to illuminate the gentle slope of his nose, the sharp line of his jaw, the white of his throat peeking above the black collar of his shirt. Gone is the nine year old’s baby fat on his cheeks, the grabby hands reaching for  _big brother big brother_ , the high pitch of his voice. 

Did he really teach this beautiful boy how to sleep at a warzone?

It doesn’t take long for him to stop him dead in his tracks, to snatch the wrist proffered to him, vulnerable and exposed. The wall next to them blasts apart onto the street below, leaving in its hollow the cool outside air behind. They stare at each other for a while and to Itachi it feels like he is still the center of Sasuke’s universe. And then he snaps the wrist and lets go. 

His younger brother is on his knees, crying out in pain. Itachi closing his eyes for less than a second, before he turns his back on him again. Every childhood promise drops down on the street below, drops down the bottom of his stomach. Fizzles, but doesn’t dissolve.

_“You got to give them the feeling you’re not going to feel chased when they chase you.” She says as she teaches him the intimacy of a wrist, of a throat in between two rows of metal lockers._

_One of them is his. One of them has a picture of his younger brother stuck to the door inside._

Sasuke gets up again, the fight inside of him still not knocked out cold.

vi.

The palm on his throat is oddly soft, even if the grip is steel; easing the air up and out of his windpipe. Sasuke has his eyes shut tight, hyperaware of his back pressing against the wall, of his feet dangling above the floor, of the fingertips holding his head up by the hinge of his jaw. 

He wonders if they would leave soft red spots behind, if they would mark him a little bit more in Itachi’s name. 

 _You don’t have enough hate._ He feels Itachi’s thumb push into the skin stretched over the bone of his jaw– a mark, and he sinks his teeth down his bottom lip, tries not to focus on the warm gush of breath over his cheek, to focus on the drying blood streaming along his chin.  _And you never will._ He can feel in the press of the palm upon his throat how  _unbearably_ close his brother’s mouth is to his own.

He can feel in the press of that palm that the score remains

_unsettled._

vii.

When Sasuke first meets Itachi again after several years, he’s wearing black. 


	5. knock me off track (ep. 443 rewrite)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a rewrite of naruto ep. 443, of some sort: itachi decides to curb sasuke's ambition, somewhat; make it less potent and more focused on, well, him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can't tell me itachi would stand for that little display of teenage rage sasuke threw at him, let alone just leave it at that~

.

It’s already late when he walks outside of the Hokage’s office, the sun having long dropped low behind the high buildings of the village and bleeding its orange and pale pink colors along the prim and proper line of the horizon. He’d wanted to be home when his little brother returned from that three year-long training he’d undertaken with Shisui, but circumstances didn’t allow him a moment of spare time; there had been a scuffle with a S-ranked outlaw at the outskirts of the forest and the resulting paperwork had fallen squarely on his shoulders, followed by an audience with the Fourth regarding the precarious situation with his clan. His gaze trails along the straight lines of the window ledges and the eaves of the opposite buildings, before he blinks slowly, owlishly and turns his gaze upwards at the darkening sky. In less than a second, he’s leapt onto the rooftop of the _udonya_ , positioned in a crouch with the cypress-wooden sheath of his _katana_ hard-pressed against his back, then he moves homewards.

When he slides the _shoji_ door of the entrance hall open, he’s greeted by the sight of his mother’s back, as she sits sunken on her knees to rearrange the sandals on the rack.

“ _Tadaima.”_

Her long hair falls gracefully around her shoulders as she moves about and takes a peek at him, offers him a smile, delicate as a _kokeshi_ doll. She should get out more, Itachi thinks to himself as he returns the gesture, her face would welcome the sunshine.

“ _Okaeri.”_  

He tugs off his sandals and takes his weapon off his back, his fingers automatically sliding up and down the smooth leather strap as he holds it to his chest. Several questions about his little brother come to the forefront of his mind— _how is he? where is he now? how much has he changed?_ It seems however that Mikoto could see past his cool façade with no effort at all and she pushes herself up and rights her back.

“Sasuke’s home.” There’s a tinge of relief in there, _there_ on the back of her tongue. “He’s resting from the journey. You can go see him in the morning.” She pushes some stray strands of hair behind her ear as she says this, then she offers him a comforting expression and continues, “Itachi.. Are you hungry? I have some dinner left for you.”

Itachi draws in a breath and tilts his head to the right, glancing down at his mother and her chalk-white face, then he smiles slightly and nods.

“I’d like to change first, mother. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He says before he makes his way to the corridor.

For the past three years, he feels as if someone pushed the bars of his ribcage outwards, leaving an emptied-out concave behind in their thoroughness. It’s not entirely dark in the hallway so he can see the sepia-hued shapes and silhouettes flickering on the rice paper of the walls. Somehow the knowledge his little brother has returned to them leaves him with a sense of fulfillment. There’s a tremor settling inside his right ankle when he halts in front of Sasuke’s room, tempted to open the door and glimpse inside, just to string together his ribs again and to be able to pull them back where they belong and this all from the mere sight of his little brother, sleeping and well. And yet he doesn’t, he shakes his head in self-chastisement and walks onwards to his own room, where he changes out of his ANBU uniform.

His katana lies on top of his futon and its outline leaves wrinkles in the whitish sheets. His back is turned to his bed out of ingrained habits to keep an eye on all the entry points in case of an attack. His elbow guards and chest plate come thudding onto the floorboards. With his left hand he pulls loose his ponytail and holds the elastic as he ruffles his hair with his right. Sand has matted the shine and he grimaces when his fingertips brush against a few twigs. Itachi continues by stretching his arms above his head and rolling his neck from right to left, front to back and again. He’ll take a shower before he goes to bed, but first he pulls the black undershirt up and over his head and puts on his usual shirt. There’s no point in changing out of these pants, he muses, but he does take off the shin guards.

At dinner, his mother is his only company; she sets the table with the small jade-green bowls of food, fills him a glass with water and a cup with _kocha_. The kitchen is permeated with the heavy smell of cooked pork, the cabbage leaves wrapped around them and of the light citrus in the _ponzu_ sauce, is permeated with the steam of the rice cooker and the fresh tea. Mikoto joins him at the table and sits daintily with her knees pressed together and her hands curved around her own cup. He picks up his chopsticks and digs in, complimenting his mother after the first few bites. The corners of her mouth twitch into a small smile, her mouth above the brim of her teacup.

“How did Sasuke look?” Itachi asks softly, reaching for a slice of celery in the bowl furthest to the left. “Was he very tired?” His concern soaks through the tone of his voice.

Mikoto lowers her gaze; the kitchen lighting adds to show off the beginning wrinkles around her almond eyes and her mouth, her long eyelashes lower upon the skin under her eyes as she blinks and eventually she looks at her eldest son again with a touch of kindness to her features. Her teacup clunks as she sets it back upon the table.

“If anything, Sasuke looked quite determined.” Wistfulness takes over his mother as she gathers the empty celery bowl with both hands and drags it over to her side of the table, “He’s growing up with a sense of seriousness I would never have expected when he was six and all he ever wanted was for you to…” She sighs deeply, giving him a look that indicates that he knows well enough what she’s talking about _._

 _And he does of course_ —a pair of pudgy arms thrown around his waist the moment he stepped through the doorway, a mop of unruly hair snug underneath his chin, the warmth of a small body pressed tight against him. Itachi swallows down his food and reaches for his bowl of rice, holding it in his left hand as he starts eating from it. It’s quiet for a while; the past acting as a transparent filter pasted over the inside of the kitchen, his childlike form sliding the door open as Sasuke almost stumbles over his own feet to rush towards him, the thud of their small bodies colliding, their mother scolding them over at the sink with her hands on her hips. His private smile goes unnoticed.

“ _Ah_ , Itachi. You’re home. Nothing to report I assume.” His father’s deep voice cuts through the silence like a blunt blade; causing an upset of the balance. Itachi puts the half-emptied bowl back on the tabletop.

The legs of his mother’s chair scrape gratingly over the floorboards as she rises to stand. Her dainty hands look so bright, offsetting against the poor kitchen lighting. Soon enough she’s at the sink, putting all the used bowls away. Itachi regards his father; he looks exhausted and the dimples around his mouth seemed to have gotten deeper.

“No, father, nothing you don’t already know. How did your affairs proceed?” He asks as he puts his chopsticks down, having finished his meal entirely. Mikoto comes to clean up and presses her hand to his right shoulder for a brief moment after he asks if he could be of any help, her palm is warm and soapy and she shakes her head _no_ , some strands of hair stuck to the underside of her jaw.

Fugaku offers his eldest a simple shrug and that conveys everything there needs to be said. His footsteps are muffled by his socks, as he trudges to the kitchen counter and reaches for a glass in the cabinet.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” His mother asks, coming to stand next to him, elbow to elbow almost. There’s a slight hunch in his father’s shoulders, making him slump forwards a bit.

They’ve all been working hard, Itachi muses as he listens his parents murmur amongst each other; his father had been capable to appease the most obtuse and callous of their clan members, the ones clamoring to the pride and name of their clan, but he’s relieved to see that his father also understands that an absence of war isn’t true peace. It will take even more diligence to smoothen all friction between the village and his clan, but he’s cautiously optimistic.

Fugaku leans against the kitchen counter with a glass of water in his hand. His features portray a kind of worried pensiveness as his gaze is pinned to a spot between himself and Itachi on the table.

He eventually lifts his head to stare at his eldest son directly and declares, “Your brother has returned earlier from his mission.”

Itachi feels the strings tangled around his ribs tighten, dig into the bone like steel and _pulling—pulling_ until his torn-open chest becomes once more enclosed. His tongue sweeps over his lower lip and tastes the remainder of the ponzu sauce, salty with a hint of bitterness.

“He shows _promise_.” There’s emphasis on that word, colored in with a touch of fatherly pride. “I’ve promoted him to lieutenant. He’ll be assigned a squad next thing in the morning.” He takes a long sip after he’s said this and gives Mikoto a sidelong glance.

His throat becomes dry and his fingers slide off the tabletop and his hands fall into his lap. For a moment nobody speaks and the only sounds inside the kitchen are those of the splashing dishwater and his father kicking his heel absentmindedly against the counter. He casts a look outside of the window, at the dark sky.

Then Itachi breaks the silence and says softly, “I’m happy with your decision, father. Sasuke will surely not disappoint you.” The only acknowledgement his declaration gets is a low grunt. His mother turns around to look and smile at him, before she touches his father’s upper arm with wet fingertips.

Soon enough he excuses himself; first he goes to take a shower to wash off the grime and sweat from his body, takes his time in soaping up and rinsing off, then he changes into his nightwear and brushes his fingers through his wet and tangled hair, before putting a pig bone comb to the strands. He gazes at himself in the fogged-up mirror as he brushes his teeth, but his mind is scrambled. Fatigue gnaws at the bowstring tautness of his muscles and as soon as he’s crawled under the sheets, his eyes slide shut. Thoughts of Sasuke linger along the sharp edge of his consciousness, like silver-lined shadows.

Would he be satisfied, now? After three painstakingly long years of training— _his body will surely be different, taller probably, more muscular, perhaps his voice will have finally lost that crack he got so awkward over.._ Itachi smiles and rolls over onto his side and presses his fingertips into his pillow, _maybe Sasuke will feel more accomplished, less unsure about the power balance between them, be happy again to see him._ His fingers curl, grabbing onto his pillow as he dips his chin and moves his knees against his chest. 

Morning light whitens the cypress-wooden floorboards all the way to his bedroom door, falls upon his sleeping face and the things on his nightstand, the warmth of the slow-rising sun rousing him awake. Itachi brings a hand to his forehead and takes a deep breath, then he settles himself in a sitting position and looks over to his wardrobe with bleary eyes. Soon enough he shakes off any remaining tiredness, gets up and changes into his casualwear, reties his ponytail and makes his way to the kitchen for breakfast. His footsteps falter when he nears his little brother’s room, but it’s quiet inside and he can’t make out any moving silhouettes, so he continues onwards.

“Where’s Sasuke?” It escapes him just like that, after one quick glance at the empty seats around the kitchen table. He turns his gaze expectantly towards his mother, who’s tending to the teakettle.

Steam spews from the spout of the reddish brown teakettle and the ceramic lid quakes from the intensity of the boiling water, the shrill sound engulfs the kitchen and Mikoto rushes to take the kettle from the stove with a dishcloth in her palm. Once she’s put the kettle on a coaster on the tabletop and turned off the fire, she gives her son a small smile and curves her hand over her hip, the dishrag fisted into a ball.

“Out. To train, he said.” She says this without much decorum, a hint of exasperation folded neatly underneath her tongue. “He took some fruit and left… Where do you think you’re going?” Her question is accompanied by shifting her weight around, on her left leg.

Itachi drums his fingers on the doorframe and answers curtly, “I want to go see him. I’ll be back short—”

Effortlessly, his mother cuts his sentence off at the end and interjects, “One of your aunts is coming around during breakfast and I need help with setting everything up. You should also eat first, your father told me you’re not on duty today anyway.” Her tone softens considerably when she speaks the next part, “Sasuke isn’t going anywhere, he’s back now.”

 _He_ knows _this and the strings he’s looping around each and every one of his ribs are getting tighter because of this knowledge but his chest has been so open and raw for these last few years_. The left corner of his mouth twitches involuntarily and he knows he makes this expression whereby the furrows along the slope of his nose deepen, much in the same way the dimples next to his father’s mouth would deepen if he made a similar one. _His chest is so open and raw, hollowed-out._ It smells like broiled fish in here, of green tea too. Itachi tries to give his mother a kind smile, but it probably looks as stilted as it feels.

After a while the pace of the morning changes and he finds himself swept up in the motions; first he helps his mother prepare an extensive breakfast, sets up the table, welcomes his oldest aunt and indulges her aimless chattering— _oh you haven’t any plans for marriage? yes, well your father wasn’t very young either, i suppose.._ Mikoto interrupts at the right moments to lighten the burden of his aunt’s noisiness, ever so diplomatic with feminine giggles and needle-prick verbal jabs. Impatience simmers underneath his stoic façade and his wrists tremble lightly as if there are daggers underneath his skin, a tremor he hides expertly by holding his teacup with both hands.

Fugaku eventually joins them in the kitchen, looking only slightly less haggard than he did yesterday evening. He faintly smells of cigarette smoke and even if his mother pretends for politeness sake not to notice, but the slight raise of her right eyebrow betrays her real thoughts. Itachi tilts his head to the left, chin brushing against his knuckles, as he observes the three talk amongst themselves about trivialities.

“May I be excused?” His voice cuts through the conversation like a current, emphasized by the slight rattle of his teacup being put to the tabletop. His aunt stares at him wide-eyed, before realizing her rudeness, coughing lightly and turning her attention back to his mother.

His father dismisses him with a curt nod, arms crossed sternly over his chest and corners of his mouth dragged downwards. As an opposite, his mother smiles broadly at him, her high cheekbones illuminated by the warm orange sunlight that bounces off the blank kitchen walls. Itachi pushes his chair backwards, pads over to the entry hall to get his sandals, slips them on quickly and slides the front door open. It’s nice and quiet outside, the kind of weather that calls for a stroll or getting some reading done out on the courtyard. He rounds the corner and sees his little brother leaning against one of the wooden pillars, head tilted downwards and shoulders slumped forwards.

 _Snares tug and pull at his ribs until they’re slotted back in place, protecting his beating heart—and right now it’s drumming, hard and restless inside his chest._ He swallows inaudibly, tries to regulate his breathing and raises his chin as he approaches his little brother.

“Welcome back, Sasuke.”

All his little brother’s anger and ambition get directed to him in a coal black glare, a set jaw, gritted teeth, a hint of teenage disdain too, _there_ in the tilt of his chin and the slight scrunch of his nose. Itachi takes the full brunt of it with a stoic face, afraid to ball his fists or heave a weary sigh. It’s an ambition he recognizes, spurred on by a pride that bleeds _red_. His heavy footfall on the planks of the corridor are accentuated by the low clunking of the bamboo spout falling down on the stone.

Itachi regards his little brother’s back as it walks away in front of him and rakes his teeth over his bottom lip, sucking it in and popping it back out again. If Sasuke truly seeks power solely for the sake of surpassing him, there’s a way he can bend and curve that ambition, make it go around him in circles, to keep his little brother safe from repercussions. _No_ , he doesn’t deny the ink-drop of satisfaction that falls into the depths of his stomach at the thought of being the centerpiece of Sasuke’s mind, but it’s a dangerous feeling, one he should keep on a tight leash.

“Did Shisui train you well?” He asks out loud, shifting his weight on his other leg, staring at Sasuke with heavy-lidded eyes. “Little brother, have you learned much?” It’s cruel to slip in the _otouto_ with a tone that suggests it’s equal parts endearment, equal parts warning. _Three years._

Sasuke keeps walking, but then suddenly he spins around on his heels at the corner, steadying himself with one hand against the wall. Itachi apprises him silently, squaring his shoulders in a subtle challenge, regarding how his pale skin glows under the noon sun. It’s enough to bring a sly smirk to his lips, the knowledge he still has power of his petulant brother breathing a ghost of heat into his chest.

“Do you wanna spar?!” Sasuke snarls, brows furrowed and a flash of teeth, bared.

It’s the reaction he wanted. “Sure, I’m curious to see what you’ve accomplished after all.” He carefully schools his features to appear unconcerned and as expected it further agitates his little brother.

They walk to the training grounds together, contrasting each other in poise and posture: while Itachi keeps a leisured pace, hands occasionally brushing against the fabric of his pants, holds his chin high and his face open, Sasuke on the contrary keeps his hands clenched into fists, his chin low and his eyes trained on the ground they’re covering. Grind crunches below the soles of their sandals, a low sound drowned out by the whipping of the cool breeze through the treetops. Itachi comes to a standstill and turns to his little brother.

“Let’s begin, then.”

In an instant their _sharingan_ blaze alive, soaking crimson through the dark of their pupils in a second, and then they move into action.

Itachi jumps backwards as Sasuke performs the set of seals for _gōryūka no jutsu_ , but he’s already preparing to counterattack with _suidan no jutsu_ and he spews a stream of water at the dragon-headed fireball coming his way. Steam rises up into the air as the fire immediately dies down. He narrows his eyes when he spots a small smirk tugging on the corners of his younger brother’s mouth and he soon realizes that it’s probably because his attack left a large part of the grass wet. Recollecting the jutsu he saw Sasuke practicing shortly before he left the village, it seems his little brother thinks he has a reason to act smug.

Softly, Sasuke murmurs _chidori_ , followed by a bundle of  bright-blue sparks forming along his right wrist, encompassing his fist. His eyes settle on his older brother as his lips purse slightly in pronunciation of the next word, _nagashi._ Itachi observes how the lightning crackles all over the wet ground from around Sasuke’s lower arm and floods over to him in a whimsical wave. He adjusts his stance and automatically makes the seals to create a water clone that’ll take the damage in his place and explode upon impact.

His clone rushes forwards to act as a wall between him and the electric current, blowing up in between them, water splashing in all directions. Then it’s Sasuke’s turn to move, much faster than Itachi actually expected, darting towards him in preparation of a full-frontal attack. Wind tugs at the hemline of his shirt and accentuates his narrow flanks. It’s time he brought an end to this mock-fight, Itachi thinks silently, as hands reflexively make the signs he copied off Kurenai during a joint-mission once for a _genjutsu._ In a play of shadows, his body waxes and wanes only to disappear entirely, without a trace.

Sasuke almost crashes to a standstill and stares in disbelief at the empty spot, before whipping around, trying to sense his brother’s _chakra_ pattern in the air but coming up empty. Before he fully realizes it, a tree materializes behind him and its thick branches come to wrap themselves around his torso, his waist and his legs to immobilize him completely. Instinctively, he flinches and starts to squirm, writhing to break free from the deadlock.

“I heard father promoted you to the rank of lieutenant, Sasuke.” Itachi says calmly, emerging above him, raising a _kunai_ in his left hand, his side-swept bangs fluttering lightly in the wind. “Congratulations.”

His little brother digs the sharp of his teeth in the sensitive flesh of his lower lip, drawing blood. With a slight _oof_ , he falls to the ground into a crouch and as soon as he notices his older brother standing behind him, shoots upwards and slips around, holding up his wrists in a cross to block the incoming kick. Feet skid over the ground, but he’s still standing, his forearms bruised from the power behind the kick, but otherwise he’s fine. Sasuke depletes his chakra reserves for one more chidori. Some of the light blue sparks are blown carelessly to the dirt by the wind.

Itachi raises an eyebrow, it’s obvious that this attack will lack the bite the previous one had, but that doesn’t take the edge off completely. He balances his weight on his right leg, rubbing his left foot against the other ankle before readying himself in a defense stance. Speed is going to be the deciding factor. One half of his little brother’s face is bathing in pale blue light, the other half somewhat obscured in dark. Sasuke growls lowly before pushing himself off and rushing towards his older brother, only to be side-stepped in the nick of time and held at his hurting wrist in a death grip. His attack digs up smoke and the snake-like hiss of the electricity dies down.

“Almost.” He tells his little brother, their faces close together, ears fine-tuned to ragged breaths, “But not yet.”

Sasuke huffs, but instead of pulling himself free like expected, he only presses closer and repeats in an annoyed mutter, “Not _yet._ ”

“You’ve improved considerably, but you just got a bit too hot-headed.” There’s a small, private smile playing along the corners of his mouth as he says this, then he lets go of his brother’s wrist. “You need to take advantage of your opponent’s weak points.” Blinking slowly, he allows his eyes to return back to their original appearance. He watches how his younger brother furiously rubs at his wrist, paying extra attention to the angry flush of the skin.

He tries to ignore the small stab of guilt, but he feels it all the same.

“You never seem to have any weak points, big brother.” Sasuke murmurs under his breath, before glancing at him from the corner of his eyes, still having his sharingan activated. “When we’re fighting at least.”

“You should look harder, Sasuke.” He responds, not reproachful like their father would’ve, but simply to offer any advice. There’s not much distance between their bodies, between their heaving chests.

There’s a beat of silence then, before his little brother moves and grabs at the popped collar of his shirt with his left hand, the difference in height there but less obvious than before. His mouth is half-open, his eyes searching for something on Itachi’s face. _Strings snap broken, his ribcage fulfilling its function to contain his spilling-over emotions in check._ He shouldn’t put his palm to Sasuke’s cheek, but he does and it’s enough to spur his little brother on, gripping the collar of the shirt so tight his knuckles are bone-white.

“You’ve improved much.” Itachi whispers, hushed like it’s a secret, like a blow that will be dealt, “In time, you _might_ even surpa _—_ ”

They’re kissing then; hard and furious, teeth raking over lip, a dash of tongue, fingertips digging into the plush of a cheek, pale skin becoming a flustered and bothered red. He stares with enthralled how Sasuke kisses him, close-eyed, with a small scrunch of the nose. It’s eerily quiet around them, or maybe that’s just because of the sped-up beat of his heart, hammering away in his eardrum. When they part, his little brother’s lips are delightfully bee-stung and slick with a sheen of spit.

“Itachi.. I _will_ surpass you.” He sounds so certain, so determined, the way he says his big brother’s name like it’s the ending sentence of an oath, the way his expressive eyes seem to shimmer with devotion. Sasuke lets go off the collar of his shirt and whips around, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his pale pants.

His tongue slowly tastes the aftermath of the kiss in between the seal of his lips. It would appear his younger brother has taken the bait and curtailed his own ambition to suit whatever his older brother has planned for him, to safeguard him. He will be safe and ever- _close, to him_. Itachi dips his chin and allows the breeze to cool his sweaty skin, then he smiles to himself, in secret.

.

only the hand that tied the knot can loosen the tiger’s bell

– cao xueqin

.


	6. scraps (multiple)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> basically a bunch of 500 word drabbles that were prompted over tumblr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--contains fluff, angst & smut and is set in multiple verses.

i. (canon)

There’s a sense of familiarity to how they’re standing: _Itachi with his back to him_ , so deceptively close the actual distance between them seems like something that would disappear in a stifled gasp, if he would _just_ reach out and touch his shoulder or his elbow and whisper the words on the forefront of his tongue. His brother casts a glance at him, narrowed eyes, thin bloodless lips and the thick black fracture lines flaking apart his sallow skin, standing out so clearly even in this forsaken cave. _No_ , he seems to murmur, a ghost of a word, before he shakes his head and slowly turns around, lets the palm of his hand slide off Kabuto’s and drop back to his side.

“You must still have questions. _I.._ We should have some time left, for this at least.” The words _I owe you this much_ are apparent without being said, something his brother has always been good at; concealing what he truly means. Maybe Sasuke’s _finally_ learned to spot them, all these black implications canopied in white lies.

Sasuke stares at him in disbelief, tries to ignore the tremble of his bottom lip or the nausea low in his belly. His sandals’ soles grind down on a jackstone as he shifts his stance, squares his shoulders in an effort to look as undaunted as possible and sets his jaw with such painstaking carefulness the defined bone structure of his face almost breaks. Itachi offers him a gentle smile, it seems like a prelude to the moment where one of them is going to burst into tears. He rubs his right eye with the heel of his hand as his older brother regards him somewhat sorrowfully.

“Can we…” He scrapes his throat awkwardly, tries to ignore that his nose started running and that he feels like a five year-old who skinned his knees and wants his older brother to carry him home, “Can we get out of here first?”

His expression softens and it’s obvious that he’s struggling with what to do with his hands. Sasuke turns around, towards the part of the cave skewered through with light, and waits for his older brother to come stand next to him. All the confidence of the fight, his fervor, his adrenalin-fueled anger slowly bleeds the tension out of his posture. Itachi presses a feather-light touch to his lower back, so soft it could’ve been mistaken for the draft instead, but it _wasn’t_ , three fingertips, the brush of his wrist.

They’re looking at each other for a moment— _Itachi takes a step forwards and Sasuke falls into line not entirely next to him, but close to him,_ like he’d hold onto the sleeve of his reddish coat and never let go. His hand reaches out, clutches onto the fabric like a lifeline; Itachi pauses for a fraction of a second, casts a glance over his shoulder and the air in the cavern doesn’t seem so cold to breathe in anymore.

ii. (seaside-verse)

Dawn or something like it; streaks of pink through gray skies and the contrast gives the horizon a purplish border to canopy the golden sunrise, his hands shift through the white sand idly with stretched fingers as he leans back into his younger brother’s chest. He’s settled between Sasuke’s knees, his sleeping shirt riding up his lower back and his calves covered in sand, but he doesn’t mind. It’s so peaceful here, he muses silently as he leans into the palm of his brother’s right hand, pressed to the underside of his jaw. With half-lidded eyes, he watches the horizon as Sasuke plays with the strands of his hair.

“You’re not too cold, are you?” Itachi asks, wanting to tilt his head backwards but not daring to bump against his brother’s collarbone. He feels the weight of an unfinished braid in his hair.

Sasuke huffs non-commitedly as he rakes his fingers all the way from the crown of his older brother’s head to past his shoulders. “It’s the middle of summer, it _never_ even cools off.” His voice still carries the remnants of sleep, a sleep _he_ disturbed with his hacking and retching and dry-heaving— _Sitting upright on their shoved-together futons, one palm around his throat, hair spilling from his manbun, a fire fanning way down his lungs._

“Unfortunately.” He murmurs with a chuckle, moving around until his chest presses against Sasuke’s tummy and his back faces the rising sun; his elbows casually bracketing his brother’s flanks, his chin resting on the endpoint of his brother’s sternum, and a smile splayed on his lips.

Humming— _a hum that begins from the cavern of his belly_ , Sasuke draws his side-swept bangs behind each of his ears, touches his fingertips to the sensitive skin around the arch of them, then downwards to the base of his neck, to the roots of his hair. “I should’ve brought a brush.” He remarks softly as he begins to card his fingers through the long strands again.

“You’re doing just fine.. _Sasuke_.” His name comes out half-way between a purr and a groan as his little brother settles the heels of his palms on the sides of his neck and massages him there.

His little brother actually looks smug; looking down on him with a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, showing off his teeth and a flash of mauve gum. He undoes the unfinished braid carefully, smoothing the hairs flat against his skull and tracks the pad of his thumb over his cheek. Sunlight warms the soles of his feet and the swell over his calves, sand sneaks in between his toes and covers the sharp points of his elbows, but Itachi can only focus on how his little brother caresses his brittle skin and drags his fingers ever so slowly through his hair.

Itachi rests his forehead against his little brother’s chest, wraps his arms around his waist and glances at the changing skies with a sleepy smile, feeling at peace.

iii. (fillers-verse, nsfw)

“ _Open up._ ” His tone of voice short-clipped as he hooks his thumb around the corner of his mouth, scrapes over the sharp of his teeth; eyes half-hooded and glinting like a mirror in an almost completely dark room.

This has been a long way coming, ever since Itachi decided to manipulate him into staying, into circumventing his ambition around the silver lining over his older brother’s shadow and how to break through it.

He groans and tilts his head back; the edge of the headboard digging into the skin under his shoulder blades, the insides of his elbows and his palms and the space in between his slightly-spread thighs sweaty, his hands shivering over the pronounced jut of Sasuke’s hipbones. The tip of his tongue flicking against his brother’s thumbnail, dragging all across the knuckle.  

Grinning, Sasuke grabs a handful of hair at the base of his head and tugs to make Itachi curve his neck even more backwards—the back of his head _thunk_ -ing against the wall; the lights in his rooms are out, but the moon is large and bright tonight and slivers of silver light wash over the exposed column of his throat, his heaving chest, the sheets of Sasuke’s bed and the bottle of lube on the floor.

He starts to _move_ again after keeping still for so long, grinding down on his older brother’s cock, keeping him caged in between his knees, sinking his thumb into the hollow between gums and the inside of a cheek and dragging his bottom lip down. Itachi rubs the palms of his hands over his younger brother’s flanks, not in an effort to coax him into a different pace— _no, his little brother needs to think he’s in control_ ; but to burn warmth into his pale flesh, leave evidence of what they’re doing for his own sake. Sasuke’s fingers twist around strands of dark hair, edging into the skin around the knuckles like snares; he moves the nail of his thumb along the front of his teeth, pushes against a canine _hard_ as he takes him to the hilt and keeps him hot and needy within him.

“ _Suck._ ” It’s not a command, not when they’re nearing the last rung of the steps; the shallow rocking of his hips, the grip he has on his older brother’s hair let up so that the roots aren’t _aching_ anymore, the stifled gasps trying to keep the _aniki please please_ from spilling from his wet lips.

Itachi opens his mouth for his little brother’s index and middle fingers, all the while moving one hand to stroke Sasuke’s cock; he hollows his cheeks obediently, wets the underside of his fingers and in between his fingers as he jacks him off, trying to withhold himself from his own orgasm. He comes crashing apart in a few hot spurts of cum, over his brother’s hand and abdomen, steadying himself with one hand in the juncture of Itachi’s neck and shoulder, panting and close-eyed. _Come undone._

.

iv. (non-massacre!au)

“ _Wah,_ your hands are so soft, ‘ttebayo!” His voice rings loud and clear throughout the ramen stand and Sasuke grits his teeth in annoyance, wrists digging into the sharp edge of the wooden counter, head tilted downwards to obscure his scowl.

Itachi offers a diplomatic smile, the same one he uses when he’s surrounded by their pushy aunts on the compound and can’t make a timely escape, and gathers both of his hands in his lap. His bowl stands forgotten in front of him; the square-cut tofu pieces soggy in the oily broth, the cooked egg floating in between the vegetables, his wet chopsticks on a paper napkin, right knee bumping against the leg his grumpy younger brother.

Next to him, Naruto grins widely with faintly flustered cheeks before bringing the noodles clenched between his chopsticks to his mouth. He starts to slurp them up loudly and messily, splatters of soup splashing all over the button of his nose, his whisker marks and chin. Itachi looks bemusedly at him, while Sasuke admires the curve of his older brother’s craned neck and the shell of his pale ear from his peripheral.

“Hey, Itachi-nii, you wanna come spar with me this evening?! It’ll be real fun!” He exclaims suddenly as he puts his bowl back on the counter with a dull clank. His face is so open, slightly suntanned from those three long years training with Jiraiya.

Sasuke clenches his fist so tight that the he snaps one of his chopsticks in half; his features are pulled together in an angry snarl—corners of his mouth tugged downwards to show off a hint of teeth, his nose scrunched and brows furrowed, dark eyes narrowed, a trace of a shadow on his cheek from the way his hair falls. His older brother regards him warily and digs the full weight of his kneecap into his leg, a gesture meant to comfort.

“No Naruto, Itachi can’t spar with you this evening.” It’s a growl, low and warning; he leans forwards over the counter to glare at his friend.

He looks startled for a moment, but then a sly smile curls up his lips and he asks innocently, “Why not?” Then he turns to Itachi and repeats his question, “Itachi- _nii_ , why can’t you spar with me?”

Itachi seems calculating for a moment, glancing between the two boys and putting the palms of his hands on the smooth surface of the counter. Before he can formulate a proper response to defuse the situation, Sasuke beats him to the punch, “Because he promised he’d spend the evening with me.” He backtracks for a moment then, searching his brother’s face for disapproval, murmuring weakly, “Right?”

It’s that fearful glint in his eyes that makes Itachi reach out and take his younger brother by the hand, smiling so terribly tender and soft. “Right.”

“Another day then, ‘ttebayo!”

Sasuke wants to _fucking_ strangle him, but he doesn’t want to cause a scene and embarrass his older brother. When he gets him alone, _though._

.

v. (modern!au)

In the winter before Itachi left for college, he wrote a short story and sent it in as his entry for the literary contest of the _Asahi Shinbun_ ; the award ceremony took place in the city hall, which was dressed up with burgundy curtains and rows upon rows of wooden chairs—there was the Minoru Muraoka’s _shakuhachi_ rendition of Take Five playing on the backdrop as everyone got to their seats and it was so incredibly warm inside in comparison to the freezing temperatures outside, the coldest winter Sasuke could remember. He was thirteen at the time and had gotten used to feeling like nothing special next to Itachi. His brother’s story got second place, won the approval of the professional jury and had gotten published in a collection.

His room looks so untouched; clean because their mother makes sure to dust and vacuum every weekend, but nothing seems out of place and the sheets smell less like detergent and more like lavender—Sasuke rolls over onto his stomach and props the manuscript on the pillow, reading it again after three years, stuck on the second chapter line five. They said it was an ode to the isolationist youth, reminiscent of the Chinese literature of the early nineties, but he doesn’t see that in his older brother’s work. It’s just a story about a young man who likes people, but only from a distance. He brings the pad of his thumb to his mouth and tastes the oranges he’d been peeling with his mother in the kitchen this afternoon, his brows are furrowed and his nose scrunched.

Sasuke did the most stupid thing in his life when he turned fifteen and his older brother spent _golden week_ with them, at home: he’d kissed him on the mouth and more or less told him that he loved him in a way he ~~wasn’t~~ isn’t supposed to and Itachi had reacted the way he thought he would so he kissed him _again_. Dinner that evening was awkward as _fuck_ , to the point he all but fled from the house to buy _apple juice_ at the convenience store five blocks from their house. Itachi had cornered him the next day, looking so infuriatingly gentle that he wanted to punch him and make his nose _bleed, **break**_. He perks up when he hears a door open and close in the hallway; _could his father be home already from work?_ —but there are no other sounds so he turns the page.

There’s a boy who the young man likes in the story and Sasuke can’t help but compare himself to his own impressions of the boy. His older brother would berate him, recycle the arguments he used a year ago and tell him that he’s confused, trying to look into things that aren’t there. But, fuck aren’t they just both on fire, Sasuke wonders as the tip of his index breaks off half-way the sentence, aren’t they burning so subtly you just can’t smell the smoke  yet?

.

vi. (vampire!sasu-verse)

“You left your phone at home.” He says in lieu of greeting, standing behind his crouched form and clutching the handle of the transparent plastic umbrella with both hands while the wind whips into his face.

Sasuke watches the dirty water slosh wildly down the sewer grate in front of the edge of the curb, his palms curved over his knees, his wet jeans sticking to his cold skin, his unruly mop of hair slick-stuck to the nape of his neck and his forehead and the outline of his cheeks. He’s accustomed to being cold, but he thinks it somewhat touching that Itachi holds the umbrella over the both of them the best he can. It’s gray all over; the sky, the rain, the buildings and even the usually white markings on the street seem faded. He pushes himself up to stand, ignoring that his sneakers and socks consequently are soaked through.

He mutters lowly, “I forgot to leave a note, ‘m sorry.”

“I figured as much.” There’s no reproach in his voice, just that warm understanding Itachi has for all his idiosyncrasies, for all the blood sport in the dead of night when the hunger becomes so palpable he shakes. “Let get you back home.”

Sometimes the walls of their apartment become too much like the bars of a cage during daytime, when Itachi has to go to work and he has no distractions aside from _Doraemon_ reruns on the television—and he’s already read all the books on the shelf, it’s so difficult to sleep through a monsoon, always has been. Itachi leans into him, even though he isn’t shivering from the cold or anything, and he’s so _alive_. The dome of the umbrella looks like the windscreen of a car, covered in droplets of rain; a gush of wind threatens to get underneath and blow the iron ribs of the dome apart, but Itachi holds firm and positions the umbrella a bit sideways, to block off the wind. Sasuke feels bad for making him come out here to get him.

“Did you see anything interesting?” He asks conversationally as he presses up against Sasuke’s side, wraps an arm around his shoulder. His woolen _hello kitty_ gloves are glinting from the dirty rain.

Leaning his head against the side of his boyfriend’s chest, he answers tiredly, “Someone’s been doing heroin in the kid park around the block. Gonna find and kill ‘em.” He’s interrupted by Itachi’s chuckles, causing his chest to rumble a bit, but he continues, “What are you having for dinner tonight?”

“ _Sukiyaki_. I’ll come along, Shisui said he’ll deal with the shipment of the ECNUP tomorrow morning so I don’t have to come in ‘til noon.” Itachi explains before putting a chaste kiss to Sasuke’s wet temple— _and Sasuke wants to push up on his toes and chase his mouth_.

They’re close-pressed, sides glued together as they walk back home, and the normalcy of it all makes Sasuke hide his smile into Itachi’s coat.

.

vii. (canon)

He’s been running for so long that the moment he skids to a halt to catch his breath, he can feel the sweat sliding down the trail of his spine— _lungs burning as he gasps open-mouthed, palm of his hand sliding off the bark of a tree; his eyes still stinging with unshed tears, the cool air fans his heated cheeks and_ … It’s close to dawn, a reddened sky rolling out above the treetops, golden light eclipsed by the thick foliage, the forest slowly awakening from a long night and he feels like he’s intruding on something entirely too peaceful for a person like himself.

Itachi simultaneously feels too old and too young, a sense of _wrongness_ being pressed into his skin as he realizes the full weight of the ANBU armor he’s still wearing; the shin and forearm guards, the chest plate, the washed-off black undershirt that’s sticking to his torso, and his forehead protector, from which he tied the knot too hard so it becomes something palpable and coarse against the base of his head. His fingertips press into the tree stem and itty-gritty tree bark pushes into the crescents of his nails, but he’s too caught in his own thoughts, light-headed as his balance tips over and he leans forwards, exhausted.

 _What if they killed Sasuke anyway?_ —his pupils blow wide and the grassy ground becomes blurry as tears roll down the corners of his eyes and over his cheeks and if he reaches the tip of his tongue to his upper lip he could _taste_ ; but what if his little brother is dead, what if Danzō decided to get rid of him because he could. Something twitches in a bush close to him and he spins around on his heel, looking around in a daze, but his feet don’t really cooperate and he slumps against the pine tree with his right shoulder.

— _lungs burning as he gasps open-mouthed_ ; but he can’t seem to breathe anymore, there’s just his ribcage being pulled open as the contents of his chest spill all out, raw and bleeding and it hurts, everything hurts _so much._ Sasuke’s dead, isn’t he? Sasuke’s dead, Sasuke’s dead and all he did, planning, scheming, _killing take care of sasuke for us mother father…_ His chin digs uncomfortably into the black earth. Itachi worked himself in such a frenzy that he fell down and his limbs are immobilized, heavy bones heavy burden, the guilt a stone on his back.

No, he thinks as he puts his palms on the ground and slowly pushes himself up, gets his feet back under him, stands up and tries to clear the fog out of his head. Sasuke’s alive, Sasuke’s alive; wide scared eyes looking up at him, a frightened voice, a boy that doesn’t recognize the brother before him. It’s time to move forwards, the board’s set and all Itachi has to do now is what was intended for him: the only road he can follow leads to death.

.

viii. (fillers-verse)

Sasuke’s fingers card through the strands of his hair, trying to shake them loose and wild from the bun, get them a bit of everywhere, stuck to his cheekbones, the outline of his face, the handle of his jaw. Teeth rake over slightly suntanned skin, down to the hemline of his white sweatshirt and nip at the juncture of neck and shoulder, roll some flesh in between and a wanton whimper dies stillborn on the tip of a tongue in the chasm of his open mouth as cheeks hollow and _suck, mark, bruise_ —darker and uglier than the petals of the bougainvillea their mother grows outside in the garden, _purplered_ tinged paler at the edges, a drop of ink spread in thick parchment. Palms come to curve over his upper arms, not in an effort to push away, because his back is already flush against the wooden pillar in the walkway and his brother’s whole weight leans onto him, but to hold steady, _still._

There’s the _hollow_ clunk of the bamboo spout dropping down to stone and the loudness of the sound eclipses the breathy stutter that chips itself on the edge of his teeth when Sasuke _bites down_ , sinks his want into him and fingertips follow, wrinkle the fabric of his rolled-up sleeves until he feels him everywhere, a hurried drum of his heart and he tips his head back, shows off the vulnerable make-up of his throat. Sasuke has to push up on his toes to reach the underside of his chin, to swipe a quick lick there, wet and slick and he rubs his own hands over his brother’s flanks, sunlight skewering the movement with white and _faint-gray._

“You’re going to be the death of me.” He murmurs when his little brother puts distance between them, a hairbreadth, the rise and fall of his chest—hurried because breath burns on the flat of his tongue.

Sasuke smiles up at him, half-hooded eyes rimmed with dark lashes, the predatory edge there in the tilt of the corners of his mouth. His lips are glimmering and he runs his tongue along the seal of them, teasing, tempting. Itachi responds with a sly smirk, presses the pad of his thumb underneath his brother’s lower lip to wipe off some spittle in one slow swipe; the juncture of his neck and shoulder feels cool to the draft, impossible to conceal to their parents’ curious gaze at the breakfast table. Another clunk, footsteps on the floorboards of the walkway, voices outside of the compound walls _soft at first_ but then louder, and Itachi slinks away from his spot, touches the elastic band of his bun and pulls the dark strands completely free.

As his older brother reties his hair, Sasuke watches contently, arms crossed, head against the wooden pillar (still warm from his brother’s back); spots a fading bite mark he made at the nape of his neck two evenings ago, when Itachi taught him how to write his reports according to the new guidelines. This new one is bigger.

.

ix. (non-massacre!au)

Somehow it was much easier to excuse it in the dark, the way he sank his short-clipped fingernails into the pliable flesh stretched over his little brother’s hips, the way he raked his teeth flat and blunt over his little brother’s collarbone, a curt hungry _nip_ , and the way he fisted his little brother’s hard cock, jerking him off to the cadence of his own thrusts—Sasuke _divine_ above him, head dipped forwards, close-eyed, a breathy laugh between _beestung_ -swollen lips, one hand perched on his kneecap as he rode him without reticence, _paperpale_ in the skewered moonlight slipping through the blinds of Itachi’s bedroom. He’s groggy from sleep, pushes himself up on all fours before he settles back, sits with his legs curved underneath him, a fist propped against his forehead, still tired. His little brother stirs next to him, rolls over on his back with his forearm draped over his face, neckline curved to show off the marks Itachi left there last night.

Itachi does a double take and almost falls off the bed when he _sees_ ; the abused nipples, the planes of his tummy smooth and unhurt until the hipbones, where a series of glaring red spots and half-circles begin, the straight structure of his collarbones punctuated with bite marks. Breath stutters _stuck_ in his throat and he quietly shifts, so his legs dangle off the bed and then he’s up on his feet, the carpet soft and fuzzy under his soles. He presses his fingers to both of his temples and sighs, rushes the air through his nose, gaze pinned to the crumpled heap of clothes on the floorboards. _This was a mistake,_ he thinks panicked, _i hurt him i hurt him i…_

He needs to talk to him, but the trust in his own rationality took a serious blow; Sasuke had cornered him and pushed all of his buttons until the button-up _came off_ , arms trapped in his sleeves, his little brother clutching the straps of the wifebeater he wore underneath, kissing and pawing like the horny teenagers they aren’t supposed to be, _not for each other at least._ Itachi shimmies into his black capri’s, forgoes the socks and softly opens and closes the door, a sweatshirt clutched against his bare chest. After a quick stop to the bathroom, he hurries to the entryway of their house, shoves his feet into his old pair of espadrilles, puts on a coat and closes the front door behind him, hair still untied, mind in a daze.

“Itachi?” His voice is scratchy, one arm behind his head, a shirt riding up his belly.

“I did something stupid.” Itachi says, looking morose in the open doorway of his cousin’s flat, _and he can’t even remember the walk here_ , the whole village a blur, a whirl of colors and faces and cacophonic sounds and smells.

Shisui looks like he just woke up himself, slightly surprised at how utterly disheveled Itachi looks and he realizes wholly instinctually that something has gone terribly _wrong_.

.

x. (non-massacre!au)

It’s snowing lightly, the winter slowly chasing away the remnants of autumn with a nip of its teeth and this only serves as a taster for what the following weeks will have in store. He’s holding the two plastic grocery bags against his chest, enjoying the mellow crunch of fresh-fallen snow under the soles of his shoes. His nose is sensitive to the cold, slightly swollen and bright red, just like the tips of his ears. Sasuke trudges a bit behind him, carrying the last bag of groceries by the handles with his left hand, a blush spread out over his cheekbones and along the slope of his nose. They’ve been talking to that Yamanaka girl in the supermarket a few minutes ago and it was difficult to keep the conversation flowing in between heavy bouts of flirting and the almost petulant silence of his little brother.

Itachi pauses so that his little brother can walk next to him, casting a quick glance over his shoulder, the line of his jaw cradled by his _too long_ woolen knitted scarf. “ _Sasuke_. Didn’t you like talking to Yamanaka-san? She was very..” He smiles at him, indulgently, “Enthusiastic to see you.”

“Yeah, she usually is.” His response came quickly, with a bit more fire than intended perhaps. He huffs then, mutters quieter, “Always wants to hug me for some reason.”

They round the corner, leaving a trail of dirty footsteps behind on the white ground; the lights of the street lanterns are already on, glowing a warm orange in their glass cages. Ichiraku seems crowded, he muses as they pass the ramen stand, the smell of broth and spices barely getting through his stuffed nose. He’s looking forward to the _shabu shabu_ their mother intends to prepare for dinner this evening, it’s perfect for this type of weather. His gaze falls on the profile of his little brother’s face and he can’t help but think he looks a lot more relaxed out here than he did with that girl in the supermarket. _You’re projecting,_ Itachi grabs onto the bags more surely, _you’re just hoping he doesn’t like that Yamanaka girl._  

He tries to keep his tone casual as he addresses him again, his little brother’s name comes out a bit more throaty though, and then he asks, “Do you like it when she comes talk to you?”

“Only when we talk about school. She’s pretty smart, I guess.” Sasuke responds, burying his chin into the warmth of his scarf. The snow just keeps falling around them, crowning their heads with fragile white flakes.

Itachi hums lowly and prompts, “You just didn’t look so happy to see her.”

“We were spending time together.” His little brother says, tilting his head a bit so he could look at Itachi. “I like spending time, with you.”

He almost stops walking at those words, because the _alone_ was so heavily implied it was almost spoken out loud and all the knots of pent-up anxiety just dissolve inside his belly.

“I’m glad, Sasuke.”

.

xi. (seaside-verse)

 _How much longer can he live on borrowed time?_ It’s a question he’s frequently asked himself, but it presses painfully at the forefront of his mind as he’s curved over the kitchen sink, shivering like a small child who has the flu. Dry coughs rack his body, forcing his shoulders to slump inwards, his chest to constrict, his flanks to tremble along the movement. Sometimes the coughs come from so deep down his belly, he’s afraid he’s going to throw up whatever’s left in his stomach. This time it’s only some blood, trickling a slick trail down the his chin. As his eyesight has deteriorated to the point he can hardly see anything anymore without his glasses, he moves mainly on memory, something Sasuke had a lot of trouble accepting, but they’re managing now, to put things back in the exact same spot.

Water runs the bit of blood and slime down the drain and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and washes both of them, then he turns off the tap. He doesn’t have to look up to know Sasuke’s standing in the doorway.

“It won’t be long now.” Itachi murmurs lowly, out-of-breath, his voice sounds hoarse and misused, as if he’s been pattering prayers the whole night. There’s the flick of the light; the soft sound of footsteps shuffling over the floorboards, and he puts both of his hands flatly on the counter, looking upwards where the cabinets are, but they’re a brownish blob, blurried.

Sasuke heaves a deep sigh, a worried one and rebukes, “ _Don’t say that_. You still have time.”

It’s a lie, blown out of proportion by the wandering hands massaging the tension from his sides, pressing the heels of his palm into the muscles. Itachi knows he’s gotten even skinnier than before, barely holding onto a red thread that’s wound itself so tightly around his ankle it hooks and sinkers him into living, breathing.

“You _still have time_.” It’s said in a tone that’s trying to convince the both of them, but it lacks persuasiveness, only that bleak desperation that occurs when a fact cannot be denied any longer.

They’ve argued about this before, in the dead of night under the covers, after dinners Itachi couldn’t finish because he lacks any appetite he once had left, after coughing fits that rankled them both to their toes. And as always there’s this darkness spreading in between his organs, started from behind his collarbone, whispering the guilt and taint to the marrow of his bones. _Sasuke’s anguish is your fault your fault your fault_ until the brightness behind his eyelids takes on the shape of characters in red ink.

Itachi allows the embrace, the security of arms caging him in, that warmth he’s always craved, still craves, will always crave. “I was always meant to die before you.” It’s a hushed confession and he can feel his little brother stiffen.

He doesn’t comment on the tears he feels between his shoulder blades when Sasuke buries his face there.

.

xii. (seaside-verse)

Afterglow, the soft colors of certain fruits split open and splattered across the sky, the twining of fingers pale, their bodies coiled into one another like cats bedding together on a haystack, close, _closer_ , his cheek pressed firmly against the crown of his little brother’s head. _tell me you love me_ , unspoken demands exchanged from mouth to mouth, a gentle press of dry and pinkish-chapped lips, but _no_ the love is there in how they move together, languid like liquid mercury, hot and bright like a ribbon of magnesium set on fire. _i will love you forever_ , a promise tucked away under his tongue and Sasuke trying to draw it out with his own, open-mouthed and a spittle-slick line between them as he pulls back, a bit of teeth peeking from underneath his upper lip.

He was dead once, flat-lining on the ground with his hair sprawled underneath him like a misguided offering, the blood drying on his face in rust-flaked lines, the darkness a form of consciousness on its own, but now his heart is racing and his mind struggles to follow the rundown tracks as his little brother trails skittish fingertips down the length of his arm, along the faintest of bluish lifelines that cross over his wrist and then to the open palm of his hand next to his flank on the bed. Sasuke’s on his stomach, his bare shoulders peeping from out under the white covers and his ruffled bedhead hair stands in stark contrast with the pallor of his skin. _and he wants to kiss the pointed curve of his shoulder_ so he raises himself upright, feeling the hunger for breakfast stretch through his stomach but it takes but a small dip to press his lips to Sasuke’s shoulder, an even smaller one to chase the sheets off his brother’s shoulder blade.

There are seagulls whining in the distance, outside the window glass, but they’re outclassed by the strong sea breeze, a howling that bashes and bangs against the walls of their cabin. Itachi touches the sunlight-gilded muscles of his back with the plush pad of his thumb, stripping away the layer of sheet until it crumples above his little brother’s bottom, and Sasuke hums under his breath, a vibration that rumbles in the pit of his belly, like that of a content cat being petted and praised. _i don’t deserve you_ , a confession to the curve of his spine and his little brother hides his face in the safety of his pillow, with just the flustered tips of his ears peeking out from in between black strands of hair.

_you do._

_you do._

He’d repeat the words until they’d make sense, but he’s hypersensitive _now_ to the sensation of his older brother carving the poetry of his name into his skin with a brush of tongue. His profile stands out against the pillow as he tries to catch a glimpse of Itachi, but the play of shadow and light on his older brother’s body is lost to him due to their positions and there’s only the sight of a hunched torso and the knobs of his spine and the glossiness of his long loose hair spread out over his arm and back.

.

bonus. (canon, nsfw)

_he needs itachi to_

_—_ soften the sharp edges he made when he broke the boy into pieces on that one night so many years ago and right now his older brother’s hands are molding their palm print into the _paperpale_ skin of his flanks as he _fucks_ him open shallowly and he can _feel_ the length of Itachi’s cock sliding into, out of him, stretching him; under Kabuto’s statuesquely-stuck gaze, on the spread-thin reddish cloak where he can still feel the hard uncomfortable solid-stone ground of the cavern underneath, pebbles grinding underneath his bare ass cheeks and the flat of his shoulder blades as he arches and writhes and under his elbows as he tries to raise his chest. Stilted gasps break open the seal of his mouth as Itachi presses his palms onto the handle of his hipbones and thrusts into the slick of him, jerks his hips to his, dips the button of his nose to the sweaty skin of the juncture between neck and shoulder.

_he needs itachi to_

_—_ put those hands on his throat, like he did when he was thirteen and kept him suspended above the ground against a blank wall and slowly pushed the air out of his windpipe, made the corners of his eyes prick from lack of oxygen, made his lungs _burn and smolder._ He stares up at his older brother, wide-eyed, with dilated pupils and flushed cheeks, and he finds it easy to ignore the thick black fracture lines flaking apart his sallow skin, because _itachi is perfect no matter what,_ especially framed by the eerie greenish light of the cave and the stalactites pointing their arrowhead tips down to them, like a dozen daggers. His cock throbs and bobs between their bodies when Itachi starts to move _faster, harder_ , settles into a rhythm that drives him _positively_ insane.

“Put..” Sasuke’s out of breath, nails scraping wrinkles over the expanse of the cloak, “Put your hands on my neck. _Do it._ ” He coaxes, spine curved inwards in an arch when his brother fills him to the hilt.

_he needs itachi to_

_—keep moving, don’t stop big brother,_ a strangled please dies on the tip of his tongue when Itachi ever so gingerly pushes his fingertips in the skin of the hinge of his jaw, unnatural eyes regarding him owlishly, unblinking as he kisses him so tenderly his heart would _break_.

“Choke me, _nii-san._ ” Sasuke croaks out, voice strangled, lost in the heat pooling low down his belly, thighs spread a bit wider.

Itachi doesn’t slam his palm flat over his throat like he did _before_ , no but instead he keeps his hands on the sides of his neck and squeezes, _softly ever-so-softly_ at first as he keeps driving his cock into him. It feels unlike anything he’s ever felt before and he gasps as if he’s drowning, still drowning as the warmth spreads throughout his entire body—but it hitches to a halt through his throat. Pressure builds, keeps building, until he feels _needlepricks_ behind his eyelids, all along his thighs and his toes and then he _cums_ all over his abdomen, satisfied.

.


	7. silver for monsters (sirens!au)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> his body is weightless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing experiment. word vomit. idk, a crush on mermen too i suppose.

.

 _his body is weightless_.

Unforgiving is the cold water in his lungs as he’s gasping, _grasping_ with fingertips white as bare-bleached bones for his brother’s wrist. Columns of light pierce through the dark mass of water, make the blackish fishscales of their tails glint a jewel’s green, a post mortem blue much like a magpie’s belongings. Airbubbles rush from his brother’s nostrils as he exhales; his face cradled by his long hair and the seaweed woven in between. His eyes the stark red of a predator’s. 

Sasuke wonders who dragged who under first, wonders if it mattered when in their lover’s folly their legs joined in a tail, their hearts beating _so_ slowly they almost stopped entirely. Those snakebitten hearts, apple-red mouths crushed together, and then for the first time the water slipping in between. 

Soon the light is blocked out from above them, leaving them in the comfort of the abyss. He feels Itachi move, the sweep of his tail a whiplash; he imagines that the silken fins fanning out below his brother's hipbones and reaching onwards from the base of his spine must be flowing like waves. On instinct, he trails behind him, arms open wide and brought back in front of him, the muscles in his shoulders and back taut, slack, taut in one smooth rhythm. 

It’s a South-Chinese trading ship, probably heading towards the port of Nagasaki, his brother informs him when they’re above at a safe distance. 

They look more opaque in the sunlight, as if their skin was made of pearl and their hair was a brush slick with black ink. Sasuke can spot some sailors scuttling aboard the large ship, busying themselves with the masts or at the back, with the steering oar. He licks his tongue over shark-sharp teeth and grins back at Itachi over the harsh curve of his shoulder. Hunger claws gashes of pressing red to his insides, pervading him in the sensation like the open ocean swallows them whole. 

It’s an old song, this song of theirs, haunting in melody, persuasive the cadence of their voices. _You_ , the appellation sounding so sad it could only drive one mad.  _You_ , an address without destination, but the promise of finding one. So close to the trading ship, so close that if Sasuke reached out he would touch the planks making up the prow, skim his fingertips over the wet wood if he wanted to. Sasuke always thinks they follow him because of the chase, because he backs away from them as he sings, daring them to follow. However, he knows they would follow his brother regardless, the type of person you would follow across hallowed battlegrounds.

Sailors and merchants aloud crowd to the side, hands clutching the wooden railing, feet stomping down in a scramble to climb up and over. _You_ , a crazed plea, coming from a mouth as dangerous as the seas. But then, all too sudden his brother stops and their song loses hold, like a knot unraveled with the threads slipping loose and away.

“Why?” Sasuke demands, pupils wide-blown from a meal denied, his tail a splash to the flat water surface. “Why?” Again, more urgent, hands on too-sharp elbows, where the bone protrudes outwards. 

Itachi shakes his head, tendrils of black and green curling along his too-slender and too-pale neck. Explains calmly, “There was a woman on board.”

His mouth is half-open, an unexclaimed ‘o’. He dares a glance backwards to the ship, where the sailors are now tying the merchants to masts. Yet he doesn’t spot her amongst the crowd of black-haired heads. 

“Why would that stop you, brother?” Sasuke asks, puzzlement evident on his face. _it never stopped us before, he wordlessly communicates._

His brother gives him that rueful smile and a sliver of ice-cold doubt masters control of his beating heart. So sad it could drive one mad.

“She reminded me of mother.” To his ears, it's a killing blow, reducing his snakebitten heart to scales and shambles.

 _Mother_ , doleful doe-eyed, a woman scorned by the love of her sons, _for_ her sons, no more. Sasuke stares at his brother unblinking, a phantom’s sadness over a deathless face. Soon the family portrait is complete, the shadow of a father over their shoulders. _What have you done?_

Itachi slinks back to the depths below, into an embrace less cold than his own arms.

_he was wrong, he was wrong, he was wrong._

Sasuke knows exactly who dragged under who first.

.


End file.
